The Philippines released the photos just hours before the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit is set to take place at Vientiane, Laos.
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Another major concern is it allows China a military base close to where USA forces regularly operate on the Philippine main island of Luzon.
Beijing has rejected the ruling and continued its activities.
China claims almost all of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in trade passes annually, even waters approaching the coasts of the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations.
The Philippines has released photographs showing Chinese coast guard ships near a disputed shoal in the South China Sea.
The competing territorial claims have always been a major source of tension in the region, with China using deadly force twice to seize control of islands from Vietnam.
Tensions have escalated sharply in recent years as China built islands and airstrips on reefs and islets in the Spratlys archipelago – another strategically important location – that are capable of supporting military operations.
Japan’s dispute with China is over uninhabited islands controlled by Tokyo.
A UN-backed tribunal ruled in July that China’s claims to nearly all of the sea had no legal basis and its construction of artificial islands in disputed waters was illegal.
The Japanese government said on Wednesday it is ready to provide Vietnam with new patrol ships, in its latest step to boost the maritime law-enforcement capabilities of countries locked in territorial rows with China.
The research includes the violent maritime stand-off between Beijing and Hanoi over the placement of a Chinese oil exploration rig off the Vietnamese coast in 2014, as well as tensions that led up to China’s occupation of the Scarborough Shoal off the Philippines in 2012.
Since those March revelations, President Obama has reportedly warned President Xi personally on multiple occasions not to pursue similar construction at the shoal, and there may have been substantial behind-the-scenes efforts on the part of the U.S.to deter Chinese activity there.
But the United States president canceled his planned meeting with Mr. Duterte, during which the sea issue was to be discussed, after the volatile Philippine president, before flying off to Laos, made an expletive-laced outburst against Mr. Obama’s human rights concerns in the Philippines’ war on illegal drugs.
The United States, which is a treaty ally of the Philippines, has repeatedly said it does not want to fight a war over the shoal.
Yet the statement did not explicitly call on China to abide by the July ruling, reflecting divisions in ASEAN.
However China may seek to quickly build the island before Obama ends his eight-year term in January, according to John Blaxland, a security expert at the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific.
The Prime Minister, in his intervention at the 29th Asean Summit Meeting, said this had also been agreed upon by all Asean leaders. All of those distinctive blue-hulled vessels, while not dredges or barges, are types of fishing vessels known to be operated by China’s fisherman militias who are used to assert Chinese claims, and harass foreign fishermen and government vessels, As quasi-civilian operatives, the militia’s activity has a degree of deniability that the Chinese Coast Guard and Navy would not have, and complicate the response and rules of engagement for foreign navies and law enforcement.
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The images issued by the Philippines about China’s new construction come immediately after the G20 and ahead of the crucial ASEAN meet in which Li, besides Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama are taking part.
